from the moving-forward dept

I've noticed something recently: I rarely listen to voicemails anymore. If I know who called, I can simply call them back, or get in touch with them through other means. The whole process of calling in to my phone and actually listening to the voicemail is quite a pain -- and I've actually found myself annoyed when I felt the need to actually listen to voicemail. Apparently, I'm not alone. The NY Times is noting that many people are tiring of voicemail, noting that other options are a lot more efficient and effective for leaving messages for people. And it's not just anecdotal. The NY Times report above quotes a study that found over 30% of voicemails "linger unheard for three days or longer." Of course, some of that annoyance may be the user interface for traditional voicemail -- dialing in, listening to each message, remembering which button to press to delete... Newer visual voicemail solutions, like those found on the iPhone, may alleviate some of the pain. In fact, in a separate study that basically states the obvious, most people preferred visual voicemail over traditional voicemail.

from the caller-id-spoofing dept

Many mobile phones' voicemail systems have worked on the basis of checking the caller ID of the incoming caller -- and if it matched the number of the voicemail box, it would automatically push the caller through to the admin interface. The idea was that if the owner of the box was calling, he or she shouldn't have to put in the passcode to get to the messages. The only problem with this was that, if anyone could spoof your caller ID, they could access your voicemail. After a few high profile such voicemail attacks, many mobile operators urged customers to change their voicemail preferences to require a passcode, no matter what. Still, there were some operations out there, that went under names like SpoofCard, Love Detect and Liar Card, that would spoof a caller ID to get access to a voicemail box. The company behind them has been fined, but what may be more interesting is that T-Mobile and AT&T were also both fined for apparently being misleading about their susceptibility to the hack.

That seems a bit strange, and the article is woefully short on details, unfortunately. Pretty much anything is hackable given certain circumstances, and it always seems a bit odd to totally blame a hacking victim for being hacked. So it would be good to know why T-Mobile and AT&T, in particular, were fined in this case. Did they not even allow passcodes to be enabled for those who wanted to avoid this potential hack?

from the it's-been-done,-it's-free-for-anyone-already dept

Google got a bunch of press earlier this week for giving out "free voicemail accounts" to the homeless. I tried to ignore the story, but it keeps getting written about, and it seemed like there were a few points worth making. First of all, this concept isn't new. Almost five years ago, we wrote about Cisco doing the same thing. There's a whole organization, called Community Voicemail, that has done this for years. But, an even more important point: Google's GrandCentral service is already free. For anyone. Whether you have a home or not. So, offering it for free to the homeless isn't anything special. In fact, it would really only seem newsworthy if, for some reason, the company were not offering accounts to the homeless. So, yes, basically, this is a story about how Google is offering its already free service to the homeless, even though the homeless have already had free voicemail offerings for years. Next thing you know, we're going to see a press release about how the homeless can now use search engines for free too... Plus, I hear that the homeless can get free Gmail accounts!